The Third Level

Jack Finney

Before you read

Have you ever had any curious experience which others nd hard to

believe?

THE presidents of the New York Central and the

New York, New Haven and Hartford railroads

will swear on a stack of timetables that there

are only two. But I say there are three, because

I’ve been on the third level of the Grand Central

Station. Yes, I’ve taken the obvious step: I talked

to a psychiatrist friend of mine, among others. I

told him about the third level at Grand Central

Station, and he said it was a waking-dream

wish fulfillment. He said I was unhappy. That made my wife kind

of mad, but he explained that he meant the modern world is full

of insecurity, fear, war, worry and all the rest of it, and that I just

want to escape. Well, who doesn’t? Everybody I know wants to

escape, but they don’t wander down into any third level at Grand

Central Station.

But that’s the reason, he said, and my friends all agreed.

Everything points to it, they claimed. My stamp collecting, for

example; that’s a ‘temporary refuge from reality.’ Well, maybe, but

my grandfather didn’t need any refuge from reality; things were

pretty nice and peaceful in his day, from all I hear, and he started

my collection. It’s a nice collection too, blocks of four of practically

What does

the third level

refer to?

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every U.S. issue, first-day covers, and so on. President Roosevelt

collected stamps too, you know.

Anyway, here’s what happened

at Grand Central. One night last

summer I worked late at the office.

I was in a hurry to get uptown to

my apartment so I decided

to take the subway from

Grand Central because

it’s faster than the bus.

Now, I don’t know

why this should have

happened to me.

I’m just an ordinary

guy named Charley,

thirty-one years old,

and I was wearing a

tan gabardine suit

and a straw hat

with a fancy band;

I passed a dozen men who looked just like me. And I wasn’t trying to

escape from anything; I just wanted to get home to Louisa, my wife.

I turned into Grand Central from Vanderbilt Avenue, and went

down the steps to the first level, where you take trains like the

Twentieth Century. Then I walked down another flight to the second

level, where the suburban trains leave from, ducked into an arched

doorway heading for the subway — and got lost. That’s easy to do.

I’ve been in and out of Grand Central hundreds of times, but I’m

always bumping into new doorways and stairs and corridors. Once

I got into a tunnel about a mile long and came out in the lobby of

the Roosevelt Hotel. Another time I came up in an office building

on Forty-sixth Street, three blocks away.

Sometimes I think Grand Central is growing like a tree, pushing

out new corridors and staircases like roots. There’s probably a long

tunnel that nobody knows about feeling its way under the city right

now, on its way to Times Square, and maybe another to Central

Park. And maybe — because for so many people through the years

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The Third Level

Grand Central has been an

exit, a way of escape — maybe

that’s how the tunnel I got

into... But I never told my

psychiatrist friend about that

idea.

The corridor I was in began angling

left and slanting downward and I thought

that was wrong, but I kept on walking. All

I could hear was the empty sound of my

own footsteps and I didn’t pass a soul. Then

I heard that sort of hollow roar ahead that

means open space and people talking.

The tunnel turned sharp left; I went down

a short flight of stairs and came out on the

third level at Grand Central Station. For just a

moment I thought I was back on the second level,

but I saw the room was smaller, there were fewer

ticket windows and train gates, and the information

booth in the centre was wood and old-looking. And

the man in the booth wore a green eyeshade and

long black sleeve protectors. The lights were dim and

sort of flickering. Then I saw why; they were open-

flame gaslights.

There were brass spittoons on the floor, and

across the station a glint of light caught my eye;

a man was pulling a gold watch from his vest

pocket. He snapped open the cover, glanced

at his watch and frowned. He wore a

derby hat, a black four-button suit

with tiny lapels, and he had

a big, black, handlebar

mustache. Then I

looked around and

saw that everyone in

the station was dressed

like eighteen-ninety-

something; I never saw so

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many beards, sideburns and fancy mustaches in my life. A woman

walked in through the train gate; she wore a dress with leg-of-

mutton sleeves and skirts to the top of her high-buttoned shoes.

Back of her, out on the tracks, I caught a glimpse of a locomotive,

a very small Currier & Ives locomotive with a funnel-shaped stack.

And then I knew.

To make sure, I walked over

to a newsboy and glanced at the

stack of papers at his feet. It was

The World; and The World hasn’t been

published for years. The lead story said

something about President Cleveland.

I’ve found that front page since, in the

Public Library files, and it was printed

June 11, 1894.

I turned toward the ticket windows

knowing that here — on the third level at Grand Central — I could

buy tickets that would take Louisa and me anywhere in the United

States we wanted to go. In the year 1894. And I wanted two tickets

to Galesburg, Illinois.

Have you ever been there? It’s a wonderful town still, with

big old frame houses, huge lawns, and tremendous trees whose

branches meet overhead and roof the streets. And in 1894, summer

evenings were twice as long, and people sat out on their lawns, the

men smoking cigars and talking quietly, the women waving palm-

leaf fans, with the fire-flies all around, in a peaceful world. To be

back there with the First World War still twenty years off, and World

War II over forty years in the future... I wanted two tickets for that.

The clerk figured the fare — he glanced at my fancy hatband,

but he figured the fare — and I had enough for two coach tickets,

one way. But when I counted out the money and looked up, the

clerk was staring at me. He nodded at the bills. ‘‘That ain’t money,

mister,’’ he said, ‘‘and if you’re trying to skin me, you won’t get very

far,’’ and he glanced at the cash drawer beside him. Of course the

money was old-style bills, half again as big as the money we use

nowadays, and different-looking. I turned away and got out fast.

There’s nothing nice about jail, even in 1894.

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The Third Level

And that was that. I left the same way I came,

I suppose. Next day, during lunch hour, I drew

three hundred dollars out of the bank, nearly

all we had, and bought old-style currency (that

really worried my psychiatrist friend). You can

buy old money at almost any coin dealer’s, but

you have to pay a premium. My three hundred

dollars bought less than two hundred in old-style

bills, but I didn’t care; eggs were thirteen cents

a dozen in 1894.

But I’ve never again found the corridor that

leads to the third level at Grand Central Station,

although I’ve tried often enough.

Louisa was pretty worried when I told her all this, and didn’t

want me to look for the third level any more, and after a while I

stopped; I went back to my stamps. But now we’re both looking,

every weekend, because now we have proof that the third level is

still there. My friend Sam Weiner disappeared! Nobody knew where,

but I sort of suspected because Sam’s a city boy, and I used to tell

him about Galesburg — I went to school there — and he always

said he liked the sound of the place. And that’s where he is, all

right. In 1894.

Because one night, fussing with my stamp collection, I found —

Well, do you know what a first-day cover is? When a new stamp is

issued, stamp collectors buy some and use them to mail envelopes

to themselves on the very first day of sale; and the postmark proves

the date. The envelope is called a first-day cover. They’re never

opened; you just put blank paper in the envelope.

That night, among my oldest first-day covers, I found one that

shouldn’t have been there. But there it was. It was there because

someone had mailed it to my grandfather at his home in Galesburg;

that’s what the address on the envelope said. And it had been there

since July 18, 1894 — the postmark showed that — yet I didn’t

remember it at all. The stamp was a six-cent, dull brown, with a

picture of President Garfield. Naturally, when the envelope came to

Granddad in the mail, it went right into his collection and stayed

there — till I took it out and opened it.

Would Charley ever

go back to the ticket-

counter on the third

level to buy tickets

to Galesburg for

himself and

his wife?

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The paper inside wasn’t blank. It read:

941 Willard Street

Galesburg, Illinois

July 18, 1894

Charley

I got to wishing that you were right. Then I got to believing you were

right. And, Charley, it’s true; I found the third level! I’ve been here two weeks,

and right now, down the street at the Daly’s, someone is playing a piano,

and they’re all out on the front porch singing ‘Seeing Nelly Home.’ And I’m

invited over for lemonade. Come on back, Charley and Louisa. Keep looking

till you nd the third level! It’s worth it, believe me!

The note is signed Sam.

At the stamp and coin store I go to, I found out that Sam bought

eight hundred dollars’ worth of old-style currency. That ought to set

him up in a nice little hay, feed and grain business; he always said

that’s what he really wished he could do, and he certainly can’t go

back to his old business. Not in Galesburg, Illinois, in 1894. His

old business? Why, Sam was my psychiatrist.

Reading with Insight

1. Do you think that the third level was a medium of escape

for Charley? Why?

2. What do you infer from Sam’s letter to Charley?

3. ‘The modern world is full of insecurity, fear, war, worry and

stress.’ What are the ways in which we attempt to overcome

them?

4. Do you see an intersection of time and space in the story?

5. Apparent illogicality sometimes turns out to be a futuristic

projection? Discuss.

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The Third Level

6. Philately helps keep the past alive. Discuss other ways in

which this is done. What do you think of the human tendency

to constantly move between the past, the present and the

future?

7. You have read ‘Adventure’ by Jayant Narlikar in Hornbill

Class XI. Compare the interweaving of fantasy and reality

in the two stories.

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